Category: Collecting
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500 Bowen leps
Continuing the streak of milestones, this morning I got my 500th lepidoptera for my home, Bowen Island. Pretty one too. Adelphagrotis indeterminata Up until now I’ve only seen Adelphagrotis stellaris, all seen here on Bowen as well.
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1,000 BC leps
This afternoon I got my 1,000th BC Lep: a Morophagoides burkerella, chilling in one of my pheromone traps. Year goal: check! A nice round number. 88 were butterfly, the rest were moths. The total count for species known in BC, as of today, is 2842. Guess I have long way to go!
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Ticking Ethics
Something well-known to the birder is the notion of ticking ethics. When are you allowed to count having seen a bird? It’s not as cut and dry as you might think. Often you get poor views of a bird; it’s bad light; the bird is flying away from you; it’s too far away; the bird’s…
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Creston, June 2024, trip report
Quick summary report of a month-long trip to Creston. I just got back last night. For this post I thought I’d just do a high-level overview, then drill down into some more specific topics in separate posts because there’s a lot to say! I chose Creston for two simple reasons: Final tally Total species: 317New…
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Trip report: Prince George
Yikes, this one’s a bit belated; I just haven’t had any time to sit down and write. The last couple of weeks I’ve been hell-bent on getting our back deck into a semi-functioning state so our clumsy cat stops falling through the gaps. Anyway, I spent May 4-12th up in Prince George to visit the…
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Trip report: Lillooet
I popped up to Lillooet last weekend to set up some traps. Not a bad trip – I saw 46 species of leps compared to 28 in the Okanagan, just 2 weeks ago. Things are heatin’ up out there! Day #1 The first night was a bit of a scramble – doing the the 3.5…
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Spring(ish)!
Well, I see April’s just around the bend and my 2024 BC leps list is depressingly sparse – a mere 24 species so far. But that’ll be changing soon. It’s been an odd year. Erratic weather, crises at home and never a spare moment. All in all there’s been very little time for mothing or…
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Techniques to attract moths
I initially got into moths courtesy of my house’s outside lights. I’d been photographing everything living thing I encountered to put on iNat, so the moths that congregated at my lights each night were a particularly tantalizing target. Before I knew it I was hooked and ordered a black light to try to attract more.…
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Decantha
One of the lovelier micromoths I get to see here on Bowen Island is Decantha stonda, image shown above. I’ve personally seen them here and the Okanagan (Osoyoos + Oliver). They’re not reported all that much, but being a micro they’re probably being overlooked. In the past I recall stumbling across them on the sheet…
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Desecrating the dead
This summer I picked up some Lepidoptera spreading equipment from Atelier Jean Paquet so I could start building up my own collection. Dave Holden of the BC Leps had been kind enough to show me his collection, give me an intro to pinning, and even provided a few pinned + non-pinned specimens to get my…
BC Moths 